


Start as You Mean to Go On

by cereal



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-26
Updated: 2013-10-26
Packaged: 2017-12-30 13:21:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1019099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cereal/pseuds/cereal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The best kinds of games, of course, are the ones where there are no losers. (10.5/Rose)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Start as You Mean to Go On

**Author's Note:**

> This was for worldwouldend and her help_japan winning bid. It incorporates a snippet from a [Tumblr post/photo](http://allrightfine.tumblr.com/post/16069451262/and-hes-like-fine-ill-accept-the-idea-that-i) and a picture/prompt/comment/thing from mylittlepwny on [an older story](http://cereal.livejournal.com/170819.html?thread=2011971#t2011971) (which is David/Billie RPF, so look out), because my brain doesn't always correctly process photos of them as separate from photos of 10.5 and Rose.
> 
> * * *

  
The best kinds of games, of course, are the ones where there are no losers.

Family Monopoly night, where even if you bankrupt early, staking it all on every property you land on, you're better for having played, for the light sound of your mother's laughter, and the way your dad uses too much butter on the popcorn.

Chess. The hours you spend thinking about moves and planning and sacrifices, and not about heartache or gaining a stone or work on Monday, better still, even if your king falls in the end.

Sex. Come first, come last, come more than once, everyone's a winner.

And love. The worst of all the games, because you lose so much, you often don't realize when you've triumphed.

&&.

There's a zeppelin flight home.

Well, not home so much, as the place Jackie and Pete and Tony and a staff call home, and the place Rose keeps her stuff. Home is a spaceship, lost in time, across a void, with an address that doesn't accept posted letters.

The Doctor is tucked up in a spare room, and there's a moment, as they're coming up the stairs, where Rose can't decide which room to put him in. It's like a table at a restaurant -- sit across from your companion, so you can look at him as he picks the lettuce off his sandwich, as he holds the straw back from the rim of his cup instead of removing it as he takes a drink.

Or sit next to him, unable to see his face without effort, but instead able to feel the warm press of his leg against yours, his arm brushing by as he reaches for the salt.

Rose settles on next door, because as a hologram, on a cold, windy beach, taught her, seeing something, without touching, isn't all it's cracked up to be.

&&.

Rose leaves him a stack of towels, a pair of pajamas, tags still on, and the ghost of a sad smile.

He wants to tell her about the ways different races clean themselves. He feels the words pressing against his tongue, itching to get out. Races who only bathe in falling rainwater, and how awful-smelling their planets becomes during droughts. Races that don't bathe, not really, but who have a sort of laser that eradicates germs. Races that reserve showers as a mating grounds, creating new life under the spray of orange-scented water.

He wants to tell her anything, really, but it's not time yet. They can't just slip back into their life together and pretend he doesn't have one heart, that there's not two of him, that one didn't leave.

No matter how much that's exactly what he wants.

So he takes the towels, and walks to the shower, and when the smell of her bath gel surrounds him as he lathers up, he only takes himself in hand for a moment, caught in a cloud of _Rose_ , before he stops and sets to figuring out just how much control over this body he has.

It's very little, apparently.

&&.

She wants to send him a text message. It's become so easy, here in this stupid parallel world, to just get by on letters on the screen of her decidedly less-super mobile.

(The super one tucked away in the back of a drawer for emergencies -- like when she worries it was all a dream -- next to a drying pack of cigarettes, a couple of painkillers, and a bag of banana taffy.)

It's so easy to avoid things that way.

Texting her mum that she wasn't going to be home for dinner, again, and ignoring the subsequent phone call.

Typing out to Jake that her date was fine, ta, but she'd left early and wouldn't be seeing him again.

Sending Pete a quick note that she'd borrowed something from the Torchwood archives and she'd have it back before anyone notices, promise.

But the Doctor, this Doctor, doesn't have a phone yet, souped up or no, and instead she has a piece of paper and the way her hand shakes around the pen.

She stares at the page and mindlessly draws a tree. Then a cow. She intricately colors in the the spots on the animal, doodling loops and swirls for several long minutes.

Finally she writes, "Tomorrow?" and slips it under his door.

A few minutes later, long enough for her to get dressed in her pajamas and turn some sitcom on, the paper is slid back under her door.

He's drawn a spaceship above the cow, little beams of light seemingly pulling it up, and above her word, he's written something and scratched out the curve of the question mark, so that now it reads, "All the tomorrows."

She tucks the note in the back of her drawers and goes to bed.

&&.

The idea that he needs to seek out sleep, and that it's not just something that happens to him, occasionally and usually on a couch in the study, is absurd.

He's not even sure how to go about it, other than dressing in the clothes Rose had given him and lying in the bed that is not his own and that he'd never like to be his own, much preferring to lend his name, in partnership with Rose, to the bed in her room, thanks.

But he tries, because tomorrow (and every tomorrow after that, like he'd written, like he knows), Rose or Jackie or even possibly Tony is going to ask how his night was and he doesn't want to have to say, "I spent it staring at the ceiling, trying to bend time."

After several hours of doing just that, right as the sun is rising, he rifles through the desk in his room and finds a small black notebook. On the second page, because you always leave room to rewrite the beginning of a story, he prints:

_Rule Book for Being Human_

Number one on the list, sleep.

&&.

Rose wakes to the sound of noise from the Doctor's room. The desk drawers opening and closing, followed by silence.

She feels better, slightly less muddled and more alert than she has in months, years, perhaps. It's such a foreign feeling, this near-contentedness, that she tries to bring the old emotions back. She thinks about one Doctor abandoning her, another Doctor who will die, and a universe lost to her, but it's no use.

It's 13 hours since the TARDIS dematerialized, and she brushes her teeth, willing herself to feel like a traitor.

She showers and tells herself she's a horrible person.

She dresses, a striped shirt (horizontal, not vertical, never vertical, never pinstripes) and pants too tight for anyone (the Doctor) to get off without considerable effort. She thinks, "These are the clothes of the worst type of human."

But it doesn't take, any of it.

Her body is trying to be happy, and she's at a loss to stop it.

&&.

The kitchen is empty when the Doctor arrives, redressed in his suit, and teeth minty clean. He thinks briefly that he's woken up before everyone else, but there's a note on the counter from Jackie:

_Tony's at school, Pete's at work, I'm at the shops, Rose has money._

She's signed it with an 'X' and he tries to remember if that's the hug or the kiss. He's struck with the thought that both are less unappetizing than he'd have imagined, if only because it appears at least one Tyler isn't repulsed by him.

Rose has snuck into the kitchen while he's read the note over and over again, and he's startled to see her finger appear on the page, pointing to the mark.

"All her friends do that now, it's 'kisses' when they leave each other, high society posturing, my mum, would you believe?"

He's so taken aback by the fact that she's spoken to him at all that he takes a moment to respond, "Oh, I don't know, Jackie Tyler, high society, high maintenance, it's all the same, isn't it?"

She slides on to the stool next to him and laughs, "Suppose so."

They sit in silence for a moment and the Doctor wants to rush to fill it, but he still hasn't looked at her, and he decides that's more important than whatever tangent he'd come up with. And anyway, isn't that part of being human, learning to live in the quiet times, too? He'll add it the book later.

She's wearing a black and white top, the neck cut just low enough that he can see her the top of her collarbone, and the bruises on her collarbone.

Why are there bruises on her collarbone?

Rose catches him looking and when his hand rises as if to trace the ugly, purple spots, she speaks.

"It's okay. They're good marks."

He squints then, just able to make the bruises into fingertips, and he thinks -- oh.

"Caught up in the moment then?"

She rears back, the stool tottering on the rear legs and he reaches out to steady her, his fingers wrapped tight enough around her arm to leave new marks, and he's perversely pleased by the thought. Whoever left the ones on her chest will have him to contend with now. He decides right then that he's not giving up without trying. He's _brilliant_ at trying.

"What?" She sputters out. "They're not -- I've not. They're from the dimension cannon, one too many rough landings."

He unwraps his hand from her arm and feels something like relief behind his ribs.

"Good how then?"

"Good because they were bringing me closer to you."

His cheeks go warm. He wasn't anticipating such -- maturity? Frankness? Relative ease? -- and so he picks at it, the adrenaline in his veins still spoiling for an outlet.

"So you've not, uh," he scratches at the back of his neck, and makes a note of how soft the hair is there, Rose's shampoo must be expensive. "With anyone?"

Her eyes drop to the counter, back to Jackie's note, and he deflates.

"There was one bloke, it was a mistake. I left right after and cried the whole drive home."

His stomach roils like he's going to throw up, and how novel that will be, throwing up when he's not even fed this body anything. This was not the first conversation they were meant to have. This was, perhaps, not a conversation they were ever meant to have, if the look in Rose's eyes is anything to go by.

"I'm sorry."

"Well, you weren't there, nothing to apologize for." She sniffs, clearing her face, "Besides, he was good-looking enough," and she ends with the ghost of a smirk.

He sees it there, the opportunity Rose is giving them, to rest for a little while before talking about what they need to talk about. He takes it.

"Yeah? Better looking than this?" And he sits up straight on his stool, plucking at the lapels of his jacket. "Bet he didn't even have sideburns. _Or_ a mole."

Her posture relaxes, seemingly grateful, "No, no he didn't."

&&.

From there, it's easier.

When she was little, Mickey used to have Rose press the 'reset' button on the Nintendo. The only job her chubby little fingers could accomplish, really, but it was also the only one Mickey would allow.

And anyway, Rose took to it, took to the way it would erase all the times Mickey jumped off a cliff trying to save the princess, or the way a fireball spelled the end for the hero. It was like a fresh start, a new game, and there's power in that, even to a kid.

It's just as well then, that the Doctor throws out his new human rule book the first time he realizes the absurdity of writing down the correlation between liquid consumed and need for the loo.

&&.

There's shopping.

Shopping for clothes, the result a closet full of suits and jumpers and jeans, boxers shorts and undershirts. And though it's in the spare bedroom, where the Doctor sleeps, Rose imagines what their clothes would look like together. She imagines the way the scent from his wardrobe would mingle with hers and how she'd be able to smell him on her collar during long meetings.

(Here in this parallel world his scent is a faint, spicy cologne that makes him smell exactly as she remembers. When he admits he's never worn cologne before now, that he's always simply smelled, perhaps, of time and TARDIS grease and the Time Lord absence of sweat, she's confused and intrigued. Then he's onto words like, "olfactory projection" and she returns that she could have done with some of that the time they landed right in the garbage piles on Tralgun 8.)

There's shopping for food, and the introduction of a new game -- one that makes light of a situation they still dance around, all inching toward each other on the couch, but stopping before it gets too close.

"We could get pizza, if you want."

"What about a new flavor of toothpaste? If you want."

"Let's check our blood pressure at this convenient machine, if you want."

He forms the words the same way every time, and she tries to mimic him, their hearts tripping faster and faster with so much wanting.

She dreams that night of a pixelated version of herself, opening TARDIS after TARDIS, a scrolling message around the console:

_Thank you, Rose Tyler! But your Time Lord is in another castle._

It's just coherent enough to assign a meaning to, and it leaves her feeling both acceptance and betrayal.

(He dreams that night of a chess game where both players lay down their kings at the same time.)

&&.

The conversation, when they have it, goes like this:

"You're the Doctor," she asserts.

"I am," he confirms.

&&.

The official debut of the Doctor, on the arm of Vitex Heiress Rose Tyler is at a music festival.

Technically, a man with a name that only exists on paper makes that debut, but it's a piece of paper Rose is certain he hasn't even looked at.

It's a bit like when he wouldn't find out what the psychic paper had conjured up until hours later, when "Dr. Tobias Mendenhall" was being read his rights in a Urpollian prison. Only instead he's going to find out his own name in tomorrow's newspaper.

When the tickets had been delivered, forwarded on from Mickey's address, Rose had stashed them in a junk drawer before the Doctor could see. It was supposed to be a last hurrah before another round of Dimension Cannon testing.

Two days before the concert, Rose decides it will be a first hurrah, if that's a thing.

&&.

( _Please, I love the suits, you know I do, but it will be so hot, unbearably hot, and they'll think you're my bodyguard and your bum, I mean, the jeans, I mean, tight, wait -- ugh._ )

Mickey had spared no expense on the tickets, but it wouldn't have mattered, because they're ushered onto a VIP lawn immediately upon entering.

Rose sticks her wrist out, prepared for wristbands and a plea for a photo in front of the step and repeat, as the Doctor considers color choices.

"Red and blue? Could I see something in a fluorescent? I don't know if you've noticed, but I've gotten a bit of a tan in my short time here on this fine planet, and I think a nice neon yellow would really make that pop."

The poor woman handling their check-in looks pleadingly at Rose as the Doctor continues on, imploring the woman to be gentle and not catch any of his manly arm hairs in her depressingly colored bracelets.

Rose takes the bands from the woman with a polite smile and a promise to make sure he wears them properly, ushering him away from the crowd.

"Doctor, you can't say things like 'this planet' right out of the gate. The media is going to think you're a nutter."

"Why not? I called it 'fine,' didn't I? I should think they'd recognize a compliment when they hear one."

"It's -- oh, forget it. Here, give me your arm."

The Doctor thrusts his arm at her with a quick smile, "I've just come around on the blue. Matches my shirt, don't you think? And my old eyes, remember those eyes? Could wear this right around my head and really make them stand out. But then I'd look like a -- what did you call it? A nutter."

He's all manic energy, apparently thriving on the fresh air after a week of being cooped up in the house, a week of steadfastly ignoring anything that's ever happened on a beach in Norway or a police box in another universe.

When she grabs his hand to put the wristbands on, it all crashes back. There's a long moment of cataloging the sweat on his palm, the twitch of his fingers, the play of the wind across that beloved arm hair. She's just about to speak, to say sod the concert, let's shag or fight or run instead, when the festival worker walks back up.

"So sorry, Miss Tyler, I forgot your --" she pushes the lanyards at them, flinching as the Doctor rips his hand from Rose's to grab them.

"Oh! Necklaces, too! Love a good accessory. Even better when they're edible. But these aren't edible, are they? No, no, humans don't really embrace edible clothing until at least the 30th century."

He's talking mostly to himself and Rose offers the worker another apologetic look before looping the lanyard around the Doctor's neck and tugging him away.

&&.

The band Rose really wants to see, a modern punk thing, but with horns, too, is a headliner and won't come on until at least sunset. They sit down on the fenced off lawn and Rose recognizes the daughter of a zeppelin magnate near the catering.

She pulls the Doctor's attention away from the handful of grass he's cataloguing, "That's Ella Price, her dad owns more than a third of the zeppelins here."

The Doctor squints, the action apparent even behind his sunglasses, and then raises the fist clutching the grass in a half-wave.

"Doctor! What are you doing?"

He startles and drops the handful of grass above his head, tumbling it into his hair, "I'm waving hello to your friend, Rose." His tone indicates that this should have been obvious and she ought to keep up.

"She's not exactly my friend."

"Oh, an enemy then? No one wrongs Rose Tyler on my watch, I'll give her a talk." He nods like it's settled.

"Not an enemy, Doctor, just we barely know each other. There's no monthly heiress tea or anything."

It's at this point that Ella walks up, cocking her head at the Doctor, "I'm sorry, do I know you?"

Rose practically hears the breath he draws to begin a ramble, and she steps in, "Ella, this is the Doctor. Doctor, this is Ella. How nice to see you again!"

It turns out that Ella is there to watch the same band Rose is looking forward to, and is a lot nicer than anyone else Rose has met that would be at an heiress tea party. When Ella offers to grab them a snack and beer, Rose gladly accepts.

"What do you think?" The Doctor says after Ella leaves. "Not so bad, eh? And all from a little friendly wave!" He seems awfully proud of himself.

"Yeah, she's great. It's nice to talk to someone I know won't blab to the papers. Probably because she'd expect we'd blab right back."

The Doctor considers this for a moment, like he's trying to imagine what possible news story could come out of the conversations they just had.

"She keeps looking back over here, you know," he says. "She might try to give you some competition for my affections, Rose Tyler."

Rose grins, pleased to be able to have one over on him, "I think you'll find, _Doctor_ , that if Ella's after anyone's affections here, it is Rose Tyler's."

"Oh?" He's sizing Ella up now, having lifted his sunglasses to peer into the distance where Ella stands in line.

"Yeah, it was quite a scandal when she came out. Not because of this world's prejudices -- if anything, they're a sight more tolerant than back home -- but because she was caught with her hands up the skirt of one of her tutors, in a library, no less."

"Amateur stuff, that. A simple cloaking device and you can copulate anywhere you want. Remind me, I'll show you."

Rose is just dissecting the offhanded way he said that, and the possible implications, when Ella rejoins them, passing out their beer.

They sit and listen to almost a full set from a band out of Glasgow that's really heavy on the piano, before Ella offers Rose a cigarette. Without a thought to the Doctor, she accepts and leans into Ella as she clicks the lighter.

The Doctor lets her get through a single, long drag before, "Rose Tyler, are you _smoking_? In this century? You know well enough the dangers and they don't sort those out properly for at least another 85 years."

Ella has leaned back to be able to look at both of them as Rose chokes and blusters for a response. She's stuck trying to decide whether to deal with the Doctor's admonishment or deflect away from what he's said for the sake of their guest.

"Yeah, well, this one isn't going to kill me."

"If you try pulling this on Holland Prime, they just might! It's a capital offense!" He's going for stern, but his eyes are fairly twinkling at her.

Ella jumps in, "Actually, Doctor, I've been to Holland. They smoke like chimneys over there."

The Doctor sits up straight, the way a dog does at the mention of a walk, and Rose has to cut him off.

"Yeah, Holland Prime is -- it's a nightclub, where he comes from. Very, very strict."

It looks as if the Doctor is going to give up and try talking about something else when he leans into Rose, voice pitched low and only just discernible over the din of the music, "You know what they say about kissing someone who's been smoking," and he sniffs.

Rose fumbles to stub her cigarette out and gives him a look like a challenge. She wants him to accept, wants him to pull her down in the stupid dry grass that doesn't smell like apples and finish what they started on the beach. Hell, finish what they started in a department store a universe away.

But he doesn't.

His face is apologetic and a promise and Rose decides to get him out of that spare room tonight.

(When the band finally takes the stage, they're all wearing suits.)

&&.

As it turns out, getting him out of the spare room happens by necessity. The maid -- a new one that began just as the stars started going out -- wasn't informed the Doctor would be staying indefinitely. She'd stripped his bed to wash the linens.

There are definitely spare sheets somewhere in the house, and Rose makes a token effort to look for them, but a day of music and drinking in the sun has made her just tired enough that she can't be fussed over what it means when she doesn't find them. (And doesn't entertain the thought of picking another spare room instead.)

"You can just sleep with me," she pauses for emphasis. "If you want."

He grins brightly at her, but without the slightest hint of the lasciviousness she's desperately hoping for.

"Don't know how much sleeping I'll be doing," and he winks.

Rose feels her jaw pop, her mouth falls open so fast. The Doctor seems to realize, too, and fumbles to recover.

"Because you snore, I mean. Used to tell my ship all the time! TARDIS, I'd say, can't you see to soundproofing Rose's room? There's only so much snoring a Time Lord can take when doing very impressive repairs on his very impressive time machine, while his very impressive human companion rests her very impressive brain."

He's spoiling for a good, distracting ramble, but Rose is too exhausted to indulge him, "It would be very impressive if you could get ready for bed."

"'Course I can get ready for bed, hardly any effort at all, that. It's just a matter of -- oh. All right then."

It's only 10 minutes later that they're folding themselves into bed.

"Do you want --" The Doctor aborts the sentence, huffing out a breath instead.

"Do I want what?" Rose turns to her side, watching the play of his hands across his stomach as he rests on his back.

"Well, I just mean, do you want to -- we could have a cuddle?" His voice lifts on the end, making it clear it's a question he's putting to her and not something he's declaring.

She considers having a go at him, but he already seems so vulnerable in his plaid pajama pants and his thin white t-shirt and his uneven stubble, that she nods instead.

"Which spoon do you want to be, Doctor?"

He shifts a few times, like he's figuring out the logistics, and then nods decisively, "The big spoon."

She rolls to her opposite side and scoots back into him at the same time he moves his hips forward to her. It's something like finally fitting together a puzzle and she can't resist wiggling a bit.

His breath hitches and his arm flies out to wrap around her waist, stilling her, "Bit of launch sequence on this body, I'm finding. Can't quite, uh, figure out how to stop the countdown once it's activated."

Such an absurd metaphor and Rose still thinks activating the launch sequence sounds like a great idea. But if her copilot isn't for it yet, she'll wait.

&&.

The rocket tries to fly itself over night.

Rose wakes up slowly to the feeling of a hand wrapped around her breast and her leg slung back and over the Doctor's. She flexes her toes and realizes she'd been caressing his calf with her foot. He nuzzles into her hair and mumbles a greeting as he tightens his arm and rocks his hips into her bum.

"Well good morning to you, too," she keeps her voice quiet, trying to prolong the fragile intimacy.

(Trying not to wake him up.)

His hand skates down to scratch soft circles on her thigh and it's only when he spells out his name that Rose realizes he's definitely already awake, and that he's not running away. She holds her breath and he stops.

"Ticklish, Rose Tyler?"

She tries to roll into him, to see his face, but he stops her with his arm.

"No, not ticklish," she pauses to find the right words. "Happy though."

He hums in affirmation and Rose feels the sound vibrate from his chest to her back. He gives another quick rock of his hips before pulling back to bound off the bed.

As he moves to dash into the en suite, she stops him, "Doctor?"

He pauses, half through the door, and eyes wide and hopeful, "Yeah?"

Come back to bed. Come fuck me. Come tell me you love me again.

Instead:

"You snore, too."

&&.

It's 44 interminable hours before they have their first (or second or third or fourth) kiss.

It's 44 and a half hours before they finally sleep together.

There is, almost predictably, a game involved.

They've checked into a hotel because her mum is having the upstairs rooms painted.

("That was never meant to be the permanent color, Rose. If you two are going to live there, I can't having that awful faded purple forever. What if my first grandchild is conceived in an ugly room like that!" Her mum, perhaps, is going a little crazy with the whole lady-of-the-house thing.)

In addition to the fancy restaurants, and fancy lounge, and fancy music, there is a less-fancy arcade for kids. Kids who go to bed at 11 p.m., leaving one-and-a-half grown ups (75% each) the run of the place.

After a rousing game of table tennis, and a basketball shootout, and a few car racing games, the Doctor decides there ought to be stakes. There's an old science fiction-themed pinball machine in the corner, and whoever comes out with the higher score gets five minutes to do as they please with the other.

There's a decidedly sexual undertone, but the Doctor's examples are deliberately innocent things like, "Make Rose sing Christmas carols at the taxi line." or "Flat iron the Doctor's hair, but not too much, Rose, not enough to burn it. You wouldn't, right? Rose?"

Halfway through the game, Rose rubs her eyes with fingers dirty from arcade token and joysticks and suddenly the Doctor's torn between allowing her a point handicap, or helping her get something out of her eye.

When she points out that he is, in fact, a doctor and helped write that damn oath, even, he pretends to debate and makes a show of relenting.

He guides her to a zeppelin ride, insisting she squeeze onto the small bench so he can get a good look. He makes a show of patting his pockets, looking for the sonic screwdriver she knows he cobbled together while she met with Pete at Torchwood one afternoon.

Once he's indulged his flair for drama, he pulls out the sonic and shines it in her eye, before stooping low and close to her, "Oh, just an eyelash. Hold very, very still."

The Doctor's long, slender index finger is making its way to Rose's eye and she rears back out on reflex, "Germs!"

"Sonicked them clean," he tuts. "Now hold still."

It's over in just a second, and then he's pulling his finger away, a tiny eyelash perched on the tip.

"Make a wish."

She blows the lash from his finger and nods, satisfied it's been carried away.

"What did you wish for? Anything good?"

And he's still leaning so close, looming over her in a way that feels safe and warm and _Doctor_.

She hadn't thought to actually wish for anything, so preoccupied with the placement of his other hand wrapped around her waist, the sonic clasped between his fingers and her hip, but she plays along anyway.

"Of course it was good, but it feels a bit like a waste, seeing as I was going to beat you in pinball anyway." She looks pointedly to the machine in the corner to see that it's reset itself.

"Oh, you were, were you? I hardly think so. I believe the initials SDT were in the lead, Rose. That's 'Sir Doctor of Tardis,' not 'Sir Doctor's Troublemaker."

The hand that had been holding the eyelash drops to cup her neck and it's such an intimate hold, in such an inane setting.

"I'm a troublemaker then? And _your_ troublemaker, at that?" She pokes him in the chest to emphasis her point, but leaves her hands there, uncurling them across the firm muscle and bone, the steady beat of his heart.

"Well, it's only fair -- I'm your troublemaker, too." His head is inching closer, and Rose can feel the air released on every word, now spoken in a low, husky register.

"What would you have wished for?" She feels him release the sonic, feels the weight of it secure in the back pocket of her trousers before he moves his hand higher to curve around her back, fingers curling to scratch along her spine.

"I have to admit, I'd have wished for something that was always going to happen, too."

"Yeah? What's that?"

The spicy smell of him catches on the air as his head moves in toward hers, "This."

And he's kissing her.

Finally.

Again.

It's slow and dry, just lips touching and eyes closing and then, without thought or effort, her mouth opens to his. She feels the warm slide of his tongue against hers, and that really is a first, in either body. He angles his head and steps closer to the ride she's sitting on. She hears the toes of his trainers hit its base, before he puts one foot up the small step, leaning into her so she reclines as much as she can.

Her hands move from his chest to wind into hair that smells like her, like her shampoo, and she'd only ever thought of his scent on her, but the opposite is just as attractive.

The small noise she makes in her throat, a thing she hopes says something like, "Please continue, I'm enjoying this an awful lot," but probably just sounds like a whimper and a groan, makes him grin against her mouth.

She's left to grin back against him, but neither can bear to pull away first, so it's wet and smiling and tongues, and when she gives a tug on his hair he makes a noise to match hers.

The shell of the toy zeppelin is blocking her hips from his, and the ride is too small and the Doctor too large to pull him into her lap, so she arches uselessly into him, her chest connecting with his, but her hips meeting air. The ride shakes as his hips meet it and Rose feels gratified that she's not the only one longing for friction.

His hand snakes from her neck down to rest on the top of her breast before skating to the side and back up from below. She'd worn a thin camisole with a built in support instead of a bra and she feels his hand groping through her shirts, trying to locate the edge of a garment she's not wearing. Her theory is confirmed when the hand on her back angles up, looking for a clasp.

"Rose Tyler, are you not wearing a bra?" The last word is swallowed by a shriek from a woman in pajamas entering the arcade.

The Doctor jumps back from Rose, fumbling off the ride and nearly tripping to the floor before righting himself. Rose is still wedged in the ride and can do nothing but look on helplessly as the woman's eyes go wide with recognition and she calls out to someone, high-pitched and panicked.

"No, Philip, I don't think you left your mobile in here! Mummy will keep looking!"

She backs out of the room just as Rose frees herself. The Doctor grabs Rose's hand and, oh, the running, right toward the elevators.

(Right toward a bed.)

&&.

The hotel door lock is no match for sonic technology and it glows an unnaturally bright green before relenting.

The urgency of the situation seems to have abated and Rose is left to follow the Doctor into the room, a finger looped through one of his belt loops. When he turns to her, she frees her finger, but keeps her hand at his waist, her thumb rubbing at his hip bone with clear intent.

"I maintain --" the Doctor stops to clear his throat, rubbing at the back of his neck. " -- I maintain that I would have triumphed in the pinball match."

She arches her eyebrows for him to continue.

"As such, and as a fulfillment of the terms of the agreed upon wager, I'm collecting my five minutes."

He cuts off her rebuttal, "In anticipation of a formal appeal from my opponent, I propose awarding her five minutes, redeemable immediately after mine."

Rose tilts her head to consider this, "Would the contestant be open to a compromise?"

The Doctor nods and guides Rose by the hips as he walks himself back to sit on the edge of the bed.

She stands between his legs and ruffles his hair a bit before finishing.

"I propose that we combine the minutes to make a full ten, add another 20 for the delay of game, double that for a penalty incurred on account of a meddling pajama-wearing woman, round up from there to the morning and extend that out to every morning, just to make it easier to remember."

In one fluid movement, the Doctor switches their positions and is crawling over Rose as she scoots up the bed.

"Done," he says, but it's more of a growl and more than a bit muffled against the skin of her neck before he gives it a nip.

She's clawing at his back then, fingers gripping as she runs them to his shoulders and back down to his arse, pulling him into her hips as he sucks wetly on her collarbone.

He's scooting her shirts up to her armpits inch by inch, still confounded by the bra/vest combination and then delighted when it means there's no longer anything standing in the way of her breasts.

Pinching and licking and teeth and her shirts are off, and his now, too, and then her jeans are dangling from the bed, hanging off one foot as she works at the fly on his trousers. And it would be embarrassing, the noises she's making, if she thought he could hear them over the string of words falling from his mouth now.

Filthy words, full of aggression and heat, lovely words of promise and hope and the future, and words that combine both, like he's going to fuck her, only her, forever, and do you want that, Rose? Tell me you want that. Tell me to fuck you and never stop.

And she tells him with the way she pulls frantically at her knickers, the way she shoves his trousers and pants down to his ankles, but he's still using words, still talking so much. Laughter and joy and passion and she almost want to tell him to shut up, to be quiet, that they should know this is serious and sad, and a resignation. She feels her hand around the back of his neck tighten, and the enthusiastic noise he makes as he guides himself inside of her and she knows.

It's a benediction.

He quiets just as she reaches her loudest, shouting her climax to the ceiling as he goes still with tension and a bitten-back moan, emptying himself inside her.

&&.

The papers the next morning tell the harrowing story of a woman trying to locate her son's missing mobile and instead stumbling upon the Vitex Heiress and her beau, fornicating on a children's ride.

Ella Price sends a bouquet of flowers and welcomes them to the club.

&&.

The first time anyone ever mentions them splitting up -- in a way that is a function of human romantic relationships, and not, say, splitting up to solve a mystery -- they are back in a hotel. On a consulting assignment for Torchwood, they have a row about unnecessary danger and fragile, finite lives.

A coworker, lacking in the tact department, and staying in the room next door, asks the Doctor the next day how he's feeling, because that sounded like a break up fight if he'd ever heard one.

The Doctor proposes the next day, with a ring under the glass of pinball machine he'd bought for the Tyler house.

Rose accepts, and laughs, and teases him that divorce is just breaking up for married people.

The Doctor does not think it's funny and when he speaks his vows to her in a tiny garden park near Tony's school, he uses words like "forever" and "never ever" and "always" and finally seems to realize Rose has meant them all along.

&&.

There are new games they play then.

Games like traps to see who will finally give in and clean the loo.

Games like blindfolds and being tied to the headboard.

Games like chicken and tiptoes instead of talking. ( _I enjoy kids. In theory. Or in practice? Wait, which way do you enjoy kids? Do you want to enjoy kids with me? Oh god, now I sound like a deviant._ )

Games like real games, pub trivia with their friends.

(And the bits where he says, "Fine, I’ll accept the idea that I perhaps shouldn’t have interrupted the quizmaster to dispute the existence of a second planet called Pluto, but honestly, Rose. That’s just – it’s just short-sighted is what it is. Arrogant, even. Only you humans could convince yourselves that you’re the only species to name something 'Pluto.' I can name seven different Plutos off the top of my deceptively-small-for-the-amount-of-knowledge-it-contains head. I mean, just listen to how fun it is to say, Plu-to. Plu-to. Of course another species would have stumbled across that combination! You lot liked it so much you even called a cartoon dog that!"

  And she answers, "Doctor, I believe you. Jake believes you. Everyone on our team believes you. And we like it that you know so much, I love it, even. Haven’t had to pay our tab at a quiz in months. But you know what else we all would like? Finding a place we can return to the following week. We’re gonna be well outside of driving distance if you keep this up."  

And then he’s following up, "Why would we want to drive anywhere? If you’d just let me stay home and work, we might get the TARDIS operational sooner and then I could take you to a pub quiz on Pluto. And you can bet no one there would challenge me on the existence of more than one planet called Earth because, well, because they’re a very submissive people, don’t like confrontation, the New Plutonians, but also because they’re not so closed-minded!"  

And then eventually they’re home and _you just lie there, Rose, and you’re the universe now, and here’s a Pluto, just to the side of your knee, and here’s one behind your ear, here’s one high up on your bicep_ and:  

"Doctor, what about here?" and arching her hips.  

"No, no, there’s not one there."

  "You sure? You sure it just hasn’t been discovered yet?" and arching her eyebrows.

  "Ah, yes, yes, discovery, very important for, um, discoveries."

  And there’s a freckle there called Pluto now and it’s his favorite one.)

&&.

There are the games that other people play around them, too.

A group of kids riding by on skateboards, doing loud tricks and yelling and the Doctor is trying to maintain a rhythm, trying to thrust, and Rose is squirming and laughing beneath him, cringing when they make out the voice of their son above all the others.

Their daughter following the noise of the sonic screwdriver to her dad in a haunted house.

An old and gray Jackie pretending from a hospital bed that it will all be all right.

&&.

(But mostly there is the Doctor and Rose: a team.)

* * *


End file.
